Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Constitutional oath of office gets mangled

I watched this happen but I didn't know that they had to do the oath of office twice.  The day after he swore in he had to swear in again because it wasn't legal.  That is according to Fox News that they had to do it again the next day.  I didn't hear about that.


This is copied and pasted from www.chron.com:


"For a couple of smooth-talking constitutional experts, Chief Justice John Roberts and President Barack Obama had a hard time getting through the constitutional oath of office.


There was a false start by Obama, who started to respond before Roberts had completed the first phrase. Obama ended up saying the first two words — “I, Barack” — twice.


Then there was an awkward pause after Roberts prompted Obama with these words: “That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” The chief justice seemed to say “to” rather than “of,” but that was not the main problem. The main problem was that the word “faithfully” had floated upstream in the constitutional text, which actually says this: “That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.”


Obama seemed to realize this, pausing quizzically after saying, “that I will execute.”


Roberts gave it another try, getting closer but still not quite right with this: “Faithfully the office of president of the United States.” He omitted the word “execute.”


Obama now repeated Roberts’ initial error of putting “faithfully” at the end. Starting where he had abruptly paused, he said, “The office of president of the United States faithfully.”


From there, smooth sailing.


Constitutional law experts agree that the flub is insignificant. Yet two previous presidents — Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur — repeated the oath privately because of similar issues."

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